CEQA itself is a mixed bag. I want to be clear that there are very important things the CEQA does to improve our environmental conditions[0]! The very real issue of CEQA being “weaponized”[1] stems from how environmental complaints have to be re-litigated in their entirety every time one is filed.
Say there’s a coalition of neighbors who do not want something built. They can each file a lawsuit alleging environmental issues and each will have to be handled in isolation
*I am not going into immense detail here. It is admittedly a bit more complex than this, but this is a reasonable summary
> there are very important things the CEQA does to improve our environmental conditions
Which fits with OP’s assertion that it does “more harm than good.” (Fortunately, restricting the private right of action would curtail a lot of the harm. On the national level I’m pretty much at the point of wanting NEPA repealed.)
Government should be active and in charge of urban planning. It is a matter of the common good.
One of the biggest problems today is that urban planning has basically evaporated. Local and state governments don't plan towns anymore. Things are left to developers who have no other concern than to run a street off a major road and plop a few houses down, sell, and move on to the next project. No thought is given to traffic or public services or walkability or public transportation. No care is given to integration with existing urban structures. Instead of mixed-use zoning or building houses around a common public space, which are historically the more common and sensible form of urban planning, we end up with car-dependent suburban dead zones, suburban sprawl.
This should be receiving more attention from environmentalists, as urban planning is intimately related to environmental issues.
I don't know where you live, and this is going to be very dependent on where you live, but in most places that are experiencing these issues I think you actually have the problem backwards. For any given parcel of land, building upwards would be the more profitable move. Local governments deliberately legislate planning that prioritizes single-family homes, cars, and sprawl; developers are then forced to operate within these constraints. They'd rather be building density!
That's not urban planning. That's local gov't creating incentives through legislation and regulation. Urban planning means actually planning roads and distribution of utilities and schools and medical services and shopping areas and town squares and parks and so on. The town takes charge of its own future. Developers must then fit within this scheme. Instead, today we leave it up to developers to design roads and build wherever they want. It's a disaster.
And in many cases, single family homes are perfectly fine. You don't build skyscrapers in the Catskills. So they're not the issue. The issue is how they're arranged. Look at how old towns, even in the US, were or are constituted (at least those that have remained unscathed by Robert Moses-style mutilation). Plenty of single family homes arranged around a discernible town center. Walkable. The density consists of building around a town center instead of building willy-nilly along a road, because some strip of farmland has come up for sale. (This has the incidental defect of building on fertile land, now lost permanently to residential space.)
I don't know if its still true, but I recall reading once that CEQA had never been used to actually prevent or even slow the building of a dam or a mine or something. It had only ever been used to hobble otherwise neutral development. Its a good idea in theory, but I feel like the plaintiff ought to be able to articulate what environmental impact they are concerned about and maybe require a study from them in support of that claim too.
Yeah I'm not in favor of sprawl. It sounds like it needs to be amended, but do you want to go back to polluted air and water just because a small minority of regulations need to be repealed or amended? Wouldn't it make more sense to just revisit whatever regulations are having unintended consequences?
>do you want to go back to polluted air and water just because a small minority of regulations need to be repealed or amended?
>Turning "environmental regulation" into a unified bloc that must be either supported or opposed in totality is a manipulative political maneuver and it should be forcefully rejected.
When I say they're mostly good, but we should fix what's broken and people start hitting me with examples of broken regulation I can only interpret that as an example for why environmental regulation should be opposed by default. So I respond accordingly.
I've never said all environmental regulation is good. That would be stupid, but you should have evidence based reasons for wanting to repeal or modify a regulation.
Existing regulation was put in place for a reason and those reasons likely still matter. Even if the regulation is falling short of having unintended consequences.
All of the regulations that are used to "limit sprawl" in the US functionally prohibit the construction of new dense city blocks even moreso, and this in turn forces suburban sprawl to occur.
In sports betting you are betting against the house. If the sportsbook sets a bad line, you can lock it in and make money off of it.
Horse racing is what you describe, parimutuel, where the house just takes a commission. But the odds shift even after you place your bet. Very different for traditional sports betting.
I only took sensors that have been tested by AQ-Spec into consideration because they mention the PM module used and the Awair Element was not tested by them.
Cost is quite a bit higher over $200 and the components can't be replaced. This is important as there's a limited lifespan of certain sensors which should be taken into account.
At least for the previous model, the sensor module was an all-in-one that I was able to easily replace myself with the exact part from AliExpress. It wasn’t officially replaceable but it was fewer than 10 screws and like a 2/10 difficulty. Afterwards it booted right up.
“Luxury” is often a marketing term used for very much not luxury apartments. There’s nothing “luxury” about a 900 sqft apartment that happens to have decent stainless steel appliances and a modern look.
New apartments (like new cars) are always priced higher than older buildings, but give it a few years and prices drop.
This is very true. I’ve been in a bunch of “luxury” apartments in the Boston area…the finishes are modern maybe but rarely luxury. Vinyl flooring, cheap (albeit stainless steel) appliances, small bathrooms, etc.
I usually use the terms “luxury apartment” and “arbitrarily high rent” to mean the same thing. A luxury apartment is simply an apartment with higher rent, that is the only “luxury” about it.
Plenty of fat or elderly people can ride bikes, especially e-assist bikes. More people can ride bikes than can drive cars… 82M people don’t have drivers licenses in America.
In fact, it’s much more devastating for elderly people in America who can no longer drive due to poor eyesight when the only mode of transportation in a city is by car.
It wouldn’t take much investment (compared to pricy car infrastructure) to make many American cities bike friendly.
The GPS has to shut off when going faster than a certain speed or higher than a certain altitude. IIRC the GPS maker can decided which they want to follow, and most chose to stop working at high altitude. It’s possible but more difficult to find a GPS that will work with high altitude balloons.
Lots of smaller regional banks pay ATM fees, as they don’t want to run their own fleet of ATMs. And they have local branches when you need it, like for a cashiers check.
So, instead, California continues to mostly build single family housing sprawl into natural habitats.
A clear example of environmental regulation hurting the environment and the climate. And of course the affordability of housing.